Academic Democracy

Baltimore's research-minded Johns Hopkins University has a reputation that far outstrips its size (1,764 undergraduates, 2,038 grad students). Its fame lured Milton Eisenhower--former head of Kansas State and Penn State and adviser to four U.S. Presidents--to its presidency in 1956. Last week Johns Hopkins landed a seasoned scholar-diplomat to succeed him: Lincoln Gordon, 53, Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs.

Founded with a $7,000,000 gift from Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Magnate Johns Hopkins in 1876, the university pioneered graduate education in the U.S. Its School of Medicine blazed trails in public health, bacteriology and epidemiology, fashioned the modern clinical training of doctors. By the 1920s, however, the founding funds began to run dry, and Hopkins slipped into 30 years of unbalanced budgets and declining educational quality.

Summoned to check the slippage, Milton Eisenhower doubled the school's endowment, raised $50 million for buildings and $30 million for equipment, hiked faculty salaries by 70%. He added a new department specializing in the philosophy of science, another in mathematical statistics, strengthened Hopkins' School of Advanced International Studies in Washington and Bologna. He pumped more money into the medical school, where the quality and quantity of student admissions were fading; now, 1,200 applicants fight for the 75 openings in each freshman class.

True Community. Under Eisenhower, Johns Hopkins has again caught up with its reputation for excellence. One index is its enrollment of 850 postdoctoral students--the largest, for its size, of any U.S. university. It is also a collegiate democracy: the twelve-man Academic Council, elected by the faculty, has a free hand in setting academic policy. "There is no institution in the country where freedom is more prized," proudly declared Eisenhower. "This is a true community of scholars."

Gordon should fit easily into the Hopkins community since he insists that he is "only an amateur diplomat--my true profession is being a university professor." He taught political science and economics at Harvard for nearly 20 years, interspersed his teaching with government service, ranging from World War II's War Production Board to the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission. From 1961 until early 1966, when he moved back to Washington, Gordon was an adept ambassador to Brazil. He will leave State in June, accompanied by President Johnson's blessing as a man with "a rare combination of experience and scholarship, idealism and practical judgment."

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